


Day One: In the Chulak-ian Rain

by ParadoxR



Series: The 52nd Hour [1]
Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Alternate Canon, Episode: s01e01 Children of the Gods (1), POV Jack, Pre-Relationship, Season/Series 01, Team
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-29
Updated: 2014-07-09
Packaged: 2018-02-06 18:14:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1867596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ParadoxR/pseuds/ParadoxR
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>His "team" (maybe) hasn't learned much about the Goa'uld from the gold-tattooed man who saved them on Chulak.</p><p>...Fortunately, Jack amends to the finally clear sky, they've learned quite a bit about each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Pressure Gradient

**Author's Note:**

  * For [amaradangeli](https://archiveofourown.org/users/amaradangeli/gifts), [Kimberley Jackson (KimberleyJackson)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KimberleyJackson/gifts), [steadfast](https://archiveofourown.org/users/steadfast/gifts).



> This is a CotG rewrite framed around the question: what happens if Teal’c doesn’t speak English? Life gets harder, but we also get more team building, I think.
> 
> This is a sub-series within "Hit the Sky", and is around 38K words total. The second part is the "52nd Hour" saga.  
> Thank you Kimberley Jackson for the beta!

*****

_“Colonel, Sir, just because my reproductive organs are on the inside instead of the outside doesn’t mean I can’t handle whatever you can handle.”_

_Jack sits as his blink fails to dispel the image. “Oh, I like women just fine, Doctor. I just have a little problem with scientists.”_

_“Colonel O’Neill, I am a decorated Air Force captain with over 100 hours in enemy airspace and a much-needed doctorate in astrophysics. Is that man enough for you, or are we gonna have to arm wrestle?”_

_“And you’ve never been through the Gate.”_

_“Sir, barely anyone on this planet has been through the Stargate.” Well, there is that. “I know your reports inside and out, and I spent years actually getting it to dial before Dr. Jackson could step in.”_

_“Memorization is not experience, Captain—”_

_“I understand that completely, Sir. I also understand that I wouldn’t be assigned to this mission, like I should have been the first one, if it wasn’t necessary.” Jack watches as Hammond elects to let the scene play out._

_Which is exactly what Charlie wants to do. “…I think what Jack is saying is... Have you ever pulled out of an F-16 bombing run at eight-plus Gs?”_

_“Yes.”_

_Eyes blink above silver eagles and bronze oak leaves. “…Well, the Gate’s way worse than that.”_

_“That’s the millisecond of compression your molecules undergo during reconstruction.”_

_The silver eagles have had enough. “Here we go again, General. Two scientists?”_

_“Colonel O’Neill: You are returning from this mission, Colonel. Captain Carter’s presence is non-negotiable. You are dismissed.”_

_…_

_Well, she’s tense. “Ready, Captain?”_

_“Of course, Sir.”_

_He sighs. Great first contact there, Jack-boy. “…It must be hard.”_

_She shoots him what must be her best I’m-not-a-woman-first-to-you look. “It’s nothing I can’t handle.”_

_“Clearly.”_

_The captain grimaces at his warranted sarcasm before—“Chevron Seven, Locked!”—he watches her wonder lighten the chip on her shoulder. “You know, you really will like me once you get to know me.”_

_Clearly. “I adore you already, Captain.” Still, that wonder…_

*****

Jack blinks the memory back into the misted wall of the large prison bay. _Where the hell are you, Captain?_ He scans the room again, weathered eyes dancing over the two dozen frightened sleepers in their alien civilian garb. No blond hair, no women, and painfully few men built as robustly as he relievedly discovered she is. Well, relieved until she’d been dragged off separately in the ambush—he glances at his watch—seven hours ago. _“CARTER!” But the deluge swallows the word whole, his hope drowning in the once-dry river bed._

She must be terrified. _If she’s alive._ He re-vanishes his seven hours of over-concern, drawing back to the only thing he can examine. It's a telling sound, that slowly-ceasing rain pounding their isolated prison. They're under a tree canopy; the trees here are old, tall. _Probably ten_ _klicks from the Gate._ The roof’s not metal; likely the same weird concrete as the wall. Drainage outside is bad. Swampy. There’s a decent-sized river to the west, maybe a half-klick.

And just inside that storm, there’s twenty-six civilians, one archaeologist, two Spec Ops majors, seven alien guards (more outside: maybe seven?), and a should-be retired colonel. And no Gate expert.

 

Hammond’s going to kill him. _Didn’t you just vanish your over-concern?_ Unfortunately, he still has no idea how to make that the worst outcome. Jack’s should-be retired head reruns twenty years of exfiltration strategies for the _ump_ teenth time in as many hours. A weapon—anything. A distraction, and a temporary ally. Put those three things in the hands of Jack O’Neill, and at the very least life gets a lot more interesting for whoever’s in his way.

Charlie materializes beside his risen form as the cage door opens two hours later. _Weapon-distraction-friend_ , as they scans the heavily guarded entrance.

“Damn.”

She looks like hell.


	2. Cloud Seeding

_“Damn.”_

_She looks like hell._

 

Jack’s thoughts echo his best friend’s as the cage snaps closed behind her limp body. Her inert, beaten _(just beaten?)_ foliage-drenched body. Jack recognizes the signs of a ruined SERE-C camouflage attempt almost immediately. It’s not bad. _Rookie, but not bad._ She’s a book learner, if he didn’t already know.

Her coughing fit is wet and ragged as she pushes away the resident medic’s careful hands. “Lay still, Captain.” He orders.

She glares at him. Jack’s eyebrow almost blinks. “Don’t touch me.” She directs at the medic, with a belated “I’m fine.”

_Clearly, Captain._

Her gaze meets him again more meaningfully. “Captain, I know it looks like we’re rolling in time here, but we really cannot afford to have you hurt.” _Hurt how?_ Her look doesn’t connect; he doesn’t appreciate glaring subordinates, even hurt ones.

Carter stumbles upward but admittedly looks much more stable once she’s on her feet, notwithstanding the arm over her stomach. She’s still not listening to him, but he has to appreciate her alert scan of the room anyway. “You have a way out?”

That he doesn’t appreciate. _Weapon-distraction-friend._ “Why, yes, Captain, I’m just too lazy to blow a hole in the wall. Maybe now that _you’re_ here—” He doesn’t expect their captors speak English, but the opportunity to flip a security-breaching question with the guise of in-fighting is not something he passes up. …Not that the rain’s done anything for his mood.

“How do you get close enough to the guards?”

The colonel’s arm automatically snags her neck into silence. “First, Captain, we decide why we’d ever want to do that.” The answer is angered hush; he doesn’t dare hope the curiosity won’t get more annoying or dangerous.

Their foreheads almost collide with each other as her coughing restarts. _Damnit, Captain. ‘Liability!’_ , his brain screams as he steadies her.

…Is she _groping_ him?

He feels something slip into his waistband and bites back a curse at the idi—

 _ What _ _?_

 

Carter’s feigned coughs puff against his face as the M9 pistol slides down to rest on the cuff of his boot.

_Weapon. Distraction-friend._

\-----

The exchange of glances with Charlie and Lou takes too long _—we’re out of practice—_ and the medic is almost done checking over Carter by the time they’ve resolved their mutely-sketched plan. She’s exhausted but operational; the plan basically sucks. The wall behind his restless men is still sweating from the rain.

Jack reclaims a seat next to Daniel, still more than a little impressed by weight now tucked into his right boot.

“Jack, we need to _do_ something.”

Lou plops down next to the vocal archeologist as Jack’s thoughts turn to his distraught friend. Distraught, but honestly doing an altogether impressive job of holding it together. And calming prisoners. “ _Jack…_ ”

And driving him batshit.

“That one over there…he’s different.” Daniel’s learned into his ear.

 _Yeah?_ Jack’s periphery snags his friend’s direction. … “His head is gold.”

“No,” the archeologist bites quietly, “he’s different. He’s watching you.”

 _No kidding._ The gold-head had been monitoring him for a solid six hours. He’s good too; it’d taken a lot for him to lose such keen interest after Carter’s coughing stunt.

“You should talk to him.”

“I should talk to him?” Daniel nods back at Jack as if it’d be somehow useful. Or even possible. “Me.” _Because I speak “Kree,” or whatever they keep yelling._

“He’s different, Jack…” The colonel’s eyebrow scolds the redundancy. “I think he likes you.”

“He’s not my type.”

Daniel tries to grimace away the sarcasm. As if that’s ever worked. “No, I mean, I think you’d be better than me.”

Jack’s outward fool rolls his eyes as the inner strategist rolls the intel. _Weapon, distraction, friend._ As it is, escape depends on something that won’t happen happening and a lot of people dying. Probably his own. The truth is, he really does need a different door. He really does need a _friend_.

He gestures the slightly less sodden Carter to take the seat next to him. “What’s this?” He asks her, discreetly tapping the wall at his back.

Her eyebrows rise, but she slides down between him and Charlie, feeling the wall through her soaked (blood, dirt and Chulakian rain) t-shirt. She’s stiff on her legs but still doesn’t have an answer when she lands. _‘It’s…weird.’_ It is, and he’s really hoping not to bring the room down on them.

“Think it can take a hole?” His eyes point her to one of the grey staff weapons with which he’d become too familiar. Jack doesn’t really expect more information, but it’s as discrete a way as any to assess her drenched state of mind. He eyes gold-head-guy again. Discretion’s definitely the name of the game.

“Yes.” Confident, but it’s his archaeologist rather than his engineer.

 _‘You know?’_ His eyebrow responds.

“I’m an archaeologist, Jack. …I like old walls.” Lou puffs a chuckle.

Jack nods, his gut having acted as decisively as ever. _Bat-shit crazy it is, then._

“Captain, you sick?”

She opens her mouth to protest, but his discrete elbow to her stomach prevents any misunderstandings.  _Distraction._

“Hey! Help!” His voice cuts over the renewed coughing. The gray-suits don’t budge. Carter’s not a bad actress, though ( _well, when her eyes aren’t showing_ , he tags after folding her over). It takes about 3 minutes of pissing off everyone in the room before gold-head finally feels justified coming over.

It’d only taken half that for Jack to realize that ‘justified’ would be right word. _So much for limiting Daniel’s ‘I told you so’s._

“Hey, come on! Water! After what you did to her last night?!” _Whatever that was_. He pushes the thought out again as Goldie grabs his wrist.

So, gold definitely means stronger around here. Jack’s still not sure what he’s gotten them into.


	3. The Dew Point

Jack’s wrist twists painfully as gold-boss-guy studies his watch. “Trade ‘ya for some water.” He offers through gritted teeth.

“Najaquna chal’ma.” Daniel adds quietly.

Goldie ignores both the request and its translation, instead yanking Jack to stumble painfully across the dirt floor. _Ok, so ‘Friend’ may have been pushing it._

“Jack!” Charlie’s _‘What the fuck did we just do?’_ tone reaches Jack as he’s pushed against the door, but the colonel’s engulfed in the dark man’s gaze. _I’ll be damned._

The first shots ring out almost simultaneously. Jack turns Carter’s M9 on another gray-suit just after a Goldie’s staff blast takes out another. Two more guards eat lead and plasma. Charlie finds his opening a second later, grabbing a staff and nodding to his CO as Jack sprints into the corridor with Goldie. They’re done the hallway in seconds, and Charlie’s finished the guards and blasted the hole in the wall before his CO brings back their new friend. Daniel’s got all twenty-six civs outside eighteen seconds after Lou’s all-clear signal.

Jack searches the dead Jaffa, silently wishing for a radio instead of a watch. _Warren, where are you?_ He better be at the goddamn Gate. Twenty-six civilians and ten-some klicks, too dense forest, marginal directionality, some chance of rain, nightfall in unknown hours… His gut does most of the math as he sprints to their new exit.

_There’s no one behind you._

That’s usually a good thing, but in this case… Jack screeches to a halt, scanning the room and taking in Goldie’s frozen look. “Come on!” _This is probably the part where he kills you._

But Goldie just looks lost.

“Come _on_!”

He doesn’t move.

_You need this guy._

Jack’s watch almost collides with that snazzy Goldie tattoo.

* * *

Jack isn’t ready to regret letting Goldie take point. They’d certainly be dead now otherwise. Still, they must be at least four more klicks in the wrong direction, and folks — civilians, though surprisingly not Daniel — are starting to drag. Two of the guys Daniel’s babysitting will drop within the next couple klicks if they don’t slow down.

Jack lets his roving scan alight on the rest of his team. Charlie’s got the same look he always has at this stage of a mission. So does Lou: slightly less _‘err, what’s plan N again?’_ and slightly more _‘Shit, the devil does care’_. Carter…well, it’ll be a while before he even considers calling Carter ‘his’ within 1,000 light years of home. After 20 years of getting clobbered with unknown unknowns on missions, his least favorite are still the ones from inside the Beltway. _And you gave up on stopping those clobberings from the inside a long time ago._

She doesn’t have much in her file on way or another. SERE-C survival training, of course, plus expert marksman and Level III Advanced CQC. _Something to prove, much, Captain?_ He’d had more than enough of Academy brownnosers _before_ one’d gotten Jack his own Iraqi prison cell.

 _Only this one has even less of a clue what she’s doing._ Jack sighs down the resentment. Factually, Hammond only stuck him with someone that’s, oh, three  _years_ of training behind anyone Jack would willingly take into the field—and about ten behind anyone he’d _want_ to.

 _Not that you want to_ , he curses again as his bad knee hits a stump on their non-existent path at their over-brisk pace. A pace that’s bringing them klicks farther from the Gate and—

That was a very bad sound.

Worse, Jack realizes as he scans the back of Goldie’s head, their new ‘friend’ clearly isn’t surprised by the gray-suited company. _Again, you’re trusting this guy why?_ Charlie materializes beside his CO before the thought’s finished and just as Goldie disappears towards the unwelcome sound.

 _Shit._ Another thought Jack barely gets to as Goldie reappears, snatches Carter and spins her against a tree trunk.

_Shit._

His captain stares up at the alien too calmly, and it takes Jack a second to kick himself for overreacting. Goldie pushes her, still mutely, towards one of many staff-blasted trees along their route. It’s gentle—as gentle as a soldier that big can get with enemy gray-suits at four hundred yards.

She nods and spins around as Goldie moves back to point. “Captain!” _What the hell?_ Jack hisses. Not that the refugees and splashing aren’t loud enough to blow their cover anyway.

“I was here, Sir! It’s…” She spins again and breaks behind another tree. The captain’s digging wildly by the time he— _we don’t have time for this!_ “It’s…” She scrambles through the mud to another stump, digging for…something

“Captain!” _Combat communication is not your strong suit._ He stops short. “…Breathe.” _God, please be important._

She glances at his eyes fretfully but manages to obey the one-word command.

And yeah, she’s got a lot to learn about combat comm. Jack doesn’t need to look as he tosses Lou a brick of Carter’s once-buried C4 less than fifty seconds later. The major shakes the mud off the explosive brick and suppresses his comment, rejoining Charlie’s efforts to hide refugees.

Jack’s weathered brown eyes don’t need to check either man’s action as he scans the equipment stash. _Well, at least she’s innovative._ Dangerously innovative for how little she knows, but his gut opts to give her more latitude anyway. _Do you know anything that doesn’t start with C and end in 4?_

“Jaffa, Kree!” The 8-man patrol stops, eyeing their gold boss carefully before answering.

Jack bites off Daniel’s attempt to translate the exchange, though he doesn’t let out a breath until Goldie’s led them fifty yards west. Jack taps Lou and signals Charlie to hold the fort.

It takes another few minutes for the colonel and his officer to sneak up on the marching gray-suits. Goldie catches the CO’s eye almost immediately.

_Kill them all._

…Jack really hopes he’s reading that right. The sound of Lou’s—well, Carter’s—once-buried P90 erupts through the trees, punctuated by staff blasts. One, two, three, four, five seconds. _Too loud, too long._ The three still-living men race back to Charlie with the same thought in mind.

On the other hand, Jack had read it right.

* * *

Jack takes Carter’s radio from Charlie two minutes later and crackles it to life.

“Warren, Come in.” Of all the things she’d managed to bury, it’s by far the best. He doubts she knows it. Actually, he’s sure she doesn’t—braver than expected, but more lucky than ready. And too risky for his blood. Of course, her readiness was his job too, but… _But it would’ve been nice to know about her more than a day before the mission._

 “Colonel! Jesus, we thought you were dead!”

“None dead yet. But we’re not making it back in time.”

“Sir…”

“Dial the Gate, Captain.”

“Sir—”

“ _Captain_ , do you have control of the Gate?”

Chris sighs before hitting the button. “Four gray-suits on guard and four more just arrived, Sir. But the former don’t look to be leaving the way they rotated last night.”

Great. _Of course they aren’t._ “Go home.”

“With all due respect, Sir, there’s no chance in hell of us leaving you here. You still have an hour.”

“Captain Warren. You have exactly fifty-two minutes to get your men back through that Gate and ensure it’s  immediately sealed off behind you.” Jack grimaces into the face of Carter’s watch as it grates his damp wrist. “We need it unburied for one hour in…” Two and a half days. “…fifty-nine hours.” Because sixty feels too long. Hopefully. Jack’s gut has always been his resident math expert.

“ _Fifty-nine hours?_ Colonel, you could have _dozens_ on your ass by then.”

“Fifty-nine hours, Captain. And we won’t be calling from here.”

 Beat. “Yes, Sir.”

 

“Jack, so what exactly…”

“I know.” Jack reigns in his drenched temper with too much practiced skill. _Since when have we ever done ‘exactly’, Charlie?_

“So where…?” _I_ _know_ _, Major._ Fuck.

“Hey.” Jack jogs up to Goldie. The over-large man turns to him with one of exactly two expressions he has.

_Speak if you must._

Jack doesn’t. He just points towards the Gate, sweeps his other hand to the refugees, and air-dials the DHD. Goldie nods solemnly before the exchange dissolves away. 

* * *

Fifty-three hours, eleven minutes. They haven’t hit another patrol, following Goldie’s route. Unfortunately, the evasive maneuvers mean they also aren’t about to hit Chulak’s Stargate, and Earth’s has been sealed for six hours. The refugees are sufficiently terrified and exhausted after seven hours of this, but Daniel’s clearly antsy to talk to someone. Carter is too, though he quells it with a quick glare. Dutiful, at least. He’d take it for now.

 

He glances around again. Carter’s not the only one walking dead. _Pull it together, Captain; no one gave you the chance to ease into this._ But the storm rolling in above them doesn’t look happy.

Jack picks his way forward to Goldie and taps at his own watch where it sits on the much larger wrist. Goldie doesn’t slow the pace as he studies it, jumping four more stumps and parting another deer-like trail. Jack’s about to declare the question DOA just as Goldie stops on a dime and taps the zero in 2034 one time. The once-retired colonel elects to keep a lid on Daniel and just believe that ETA. And hour to the Gate; just over fifty-three until their window home.


	4. Vertical Visibility

His whole team is overlooking the rapidly-flooding Gate meadow at exactly 2147. Jack’s relieved to admit he’s impressed. Only one more patrol got within three hundred yards of them in four hours, and the driving hail and flooding plain has pushed most of the twenty-some-strong Gate guard up to the tree line. Jack and Goldie lead the refugees down on their stomachs, and Jack silently thanks Daniel for managing to develop some sort of rapport with them despite his ban on talking during evasions. _Well, there had been that one patrol._ And Jack’s learned the hard way that even ‘quiet’ sounds can make three hundred yards into a lot of carrion men.

Goldie, gray-suit-less from the belly-crawl, has the Gate whooshing to life before the guards even notice the string of refugees now prone in the gully’s knee-deep water. _Not used to covert challengers._

The Gate’s hardly covert though, and five refugees go down even as Charlie, Lou and Carter blast the tree line from their original overlook. Daniel tumbles the three possibly-live ones through the Gate with a resilience Jack doesn’t have time to value. The archeologist’s blasts join Goldie’s and his own just as the last refugees scramble out. Safe, wherever they are, maybe.

_But Charlie’s not getting here._

Jack can almost see into his 2IC’s soul at two hundred yards, and they share the thought between them. Covering fire and its malicious counterparts shimmer off hailstones, flooded plains and bloody armor as Jack’s 2IC watches his exfiltration routes swallowed by the orange bursts of death.

Charlie squints through the orange tints of his own stolen weapon: too-similar-looking flashes send Goldie diving from the DHD as Jack barely misses one to the shoulder. The sky darkens slightly, deprived of the Stargate’s astrophysical blue. Lou taps him and disappears.

* * *

Lou’s seen this movie before. Hell, he’s acted it. It takes him ninety seconds too long to circle around the unit pinning down his guys at the Gate, but less than half that to manage all eight kill shots and miss what would’ve been his own. _The aim on this thing sucks_ , as he glimpses friends breaking for better cover.

He doesn’t dwell on how the metal-heads use fire-staffs as Daniel’s scream rips through the storm. Lou’s got nowhere to race but back up the hill, but _you can’t save him from up there._

He eats mud halfway up the incline. Though Charlie doesn’t quite turn to him, Lou knows it’s the skeletal “pop” of his knee that catches the man’s attention over the hailstorm. The wounded man stays prone for a second, assessing their flanks and biting down on a yell for help that he wouldn’t want anyway.

He pauses for breath again 35 seconds later to watch Charlie move to a crossfire position, but he’s still rolled in beside Carter in under a minute.

Carter spares an unpracticed, semi-dazed glance for his muddied form and bruised temple, missing his mangled knee from his prone position. _You’re gonna need to read us better than that, Cap._ Not that there’s anything to do besides wave her off, which he accomplishes with a renewed burst of cover fire. _They just keep coming._ Carter’s completely immersed in the firefight as Lou out-shoots her, processing their exfil routes.

 

It’s another two minutes in the deafening fog of war before anything else moves. Lou barely senses the flanking attack before it happens, diving away from the huge plasma blast with a short curse to his knee. _Who the fuck needs a mounted machine gun that shoots_ plasma _?_

His knee screams as he rolls to new cover, but he catches the noise next to him over the pain. It’s softened. Carter’s gone.

\-----

Jack skids into their new position ten seconds after Daniel’s scream. He pulls the doctor to his knees, scanning the fire they’re taking from two directions a hundred yards from the Gate. Daniel’s just trying to avoid the shrapnel now embedded in his bicep. _Keep your damn head down, Doctor._

Another incoming blast chips away at their rock, which was too small for Goldie to begin with, much less with all three of them jumbled behind it. _Come on, Charlie._ Jack’s mental clock speeds up —sixty seconds until they’re dead— as his eyes find another opening to shoot with this stupid staff-gun.

Jack gets the exfiltration he wants, sensing the origin of the new-angled blasts — _Charlie_ — just as he senses Goldie’s next move — _Break contact_ —

It’s only as Jack dives for a gully closer to the Gate that he realizes Daniel’s too slow. _You need to train your fucking scientists._ The thought’s illuminated much too closely as an orange flash catches Goldie hard in the shoulder. Jack lands with a splash as Goldie’s materialized form brings Daniel crashing down beside him and immediately manages another kill shot. _How the hell does he do that?_ Daniel’s apparently out cold on impact as the trees behind their final set of assailants explode.

Jack doesn’t take the time to wonder why. Charlie and Lou haven’t either: he’s sure without looking despite his ears ringing from the next ten-brick C4 explosion. _Overkill much,_ _guys_ _?_ Jack’s done pulling Daniel’s head above water and re-aiming a staff as Lou and Charlie basically slide down the hill. _Carter._ “Carter!” Goldie’s not moving either as Lou grabs his collar with his non-staff hand. _Shit._ They’re out of time.

“Dial something!” It’s to Charlie — _Lou’s hurt_ — but it doesn’t matter; they don’t have anywhere to go. Carter’s watch grates on his wrist, reminding him that the Abydos and Earth Gates are already buried for now.

Jack doubts they’ll be that lucky.

* * *

“—need an address!” Sam barely registers her CO’s voice over her own splash. _Aries-Orion-Gemini-Cetus-Mic…Aquila._ It’s in her head before she knows what it is, and she’s at the DHD with about as much forethought as when she blew up the trees. _What the hell is wrong with you?_

Jack, for his part, embraces economy of thought in situations like this, and hauls Daniel through the blue light without much of it.

It takes Charlie and Lou both to drag Goldie across to the much-drier forest on the other side. It’s not until they’re in safer cover and the Gate cuts off that the colonel notices his captain’s dumbfounded look. Even then, he doesn’t bother to deal with it until they’ve heaved both men a good 50 yards from this Gate.

“Captain?” But he quells her response as Goldie blinks back to life.

Jack resists the urge to hug the man — _Cultural differences_ , Jack’s Daniel lectures needlessly in his head— instead clapping him on the good shoulder with as meaningful a look as he can muster. Which isn’t nearly meaningful enough, but Daniel’s only just sputtering awake in Lou’s grasp.

Jack’s sentry-senses briefly take precedence before the large gray falcon in question takes flight. The Gate hasn’t reactivated; no one’s chasing them. Yet.

“Everybody alright?”

Goldie joins Lou and Charlie’s nods with the requisite understanding and examines his raw shoulder carefully.

Jack doesn’t buy it for a second, quickly shrugging off his own drenched t-shirt and aiming for the shoulder. Goldie stops him.

“Jack…he’s a Jaffa.” Jack turns to his still-sputtering friend with an unspoken _‘Yeah?’_ “…They heal.” Daniel has to translate the word twice before Goldie nods, but Jack drops his shirt and turns back to Carter.

She’s still too quiet, but he hopes she’s waiting instead of dumbstruck. Not that dumbstruck would be particularly odd after a soldier’s first firefight. _And not exactly a bad first time._

Her mouth flaps once before the words come out as Charlie disappears into a perimeter sweep. “Sir…I checked the DHD here.”

Another ‘ _Yeah?’_

“It’s broken, Sir.”

 _Of course it is._ “Where are we, Captain?” His internal sarcasm is automatic, but he reads her more than well enough to temper his voice.

It’s more a gulp than a flap this time. “I…I’m not sure, Sir. I just remembered one of the addresses off the cartouche. I…I…”

“Didn’t know. You couldn’t have, Captain.” He doesn’t check his watch.

_52 hours._

Her eyes squeeze closed, but after the stunts she’s pulled today, he’ll pretend it’s the rain.


End file.
